


A Wizard's Staff (Has A Badge On The End)

by Readertee



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen, Tumblr Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7026907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Readertee/pseuds/Readertee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Grant, meet Sam Vimes. You'll get along like a house on fire. Just try to keep the screaming, running bystanders to a minimum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes before I begin: for those unfamiliar with the canons, Peter Grant is a member of the London Metropolitan Police, and apprentice to the only remaining official wizard in Britain, Thomas Nightingale, who is also his superior officer in their department of two which solves supernatural crimes. His Sierra Leonean mum is much prouder that he’s a “witchfinder” than a copper. Sam Vimes is Commander of the City Watch in Ankh-Morpork, the biggest city on the Disc which is a just pre-industrialisation New York/London mashup. He’s married to Lady Sybil Ramkin-Vimes, the richest woman in the city, and has a frenemy type relationship with Patrician Havelock Vetinari, its mostly-benevolent dictator. He finds all this vaguely embarrassing since he grew up in the gutter. My mental image of Peter and my most common image of constable-age Sam Vimes are very similar, which was probably the seed for this story. Timeline is somewhere after Rivers of London but before Broken Homes for Peter, and enough time after Thud! for Angua and Sally to get to the Captain’s rank they ended the series with for Vimes. There is a minor shoutout to the Night Watch series, which I have not read but which my internet once brought up when searching for the Discworld book of the same name.

I don’t exactly know how it happened. There wasn’t any reason to it, and certainly no rhyme - I took a wrong turning in the library and came face to face with an orangutan. So I panicked, one thing led to another, and now an escape from the Frankensteinian lovechild of Oxbridge and Hogwarts and a rather nasty traffic pileup later, here I was in an office my Mum would have condemned as uncleanable for the stacks of paperwork alone, being berated by the most hard bitten old copper I’d ever seen. He was worse than Seawoll with indigestion. He was also flouting the smoking ban, though I don’t suppose that existed where I’d ended up.

“What did you think you were doing lad?” Commander Vimes asked me. “Did you think anything, or did you just reach for the fireballs? That’s wizards for you I suppose, although what old Ridcully had to say about your clothes is anybody’s guess. He doesn’t approve of trousers at all, and I thought you people practically slept with those pointy hats on?” He seemed to be carefully ignoring the police badge Captain Carrot had included in the pile of my possessions, although when his gaze caught it he developed an interesting vein on his forehead. I did my best to look straight ahead and seem suitably sorry, and resolved not to mention that the fireballs had all been aimed at me. I had a feeling he knew that and was making some sort of Point.

“Well sir, mostly I was thinking _where am I and why is there an ape_ and then I was running from the threatening shouty men in glittery robes. Then there were spells so I sent distracting stuff” apples, mostly, “back at them, and then the dairy cart came out of a side street. It went a bit downhill from there. Sir.” First among those downhill bits was finding out I was in a place called Ankh-Morpork. Which was, apparently, on a flat world on the back of a turtle. Elephants were also involved. I hoped I was only dreaming, but I didn’t think the universe would be that kind or bother to make that much sense. The river here, if it could support a denizen, would probably be the sort of guy with permanent halitosis and body odour who gets hammered every Saturday, and after he’s finished being sick, thinks petty crime is funny and coppers an interesting challenge. Theft and assassination were both legal as long as you belonged to the appropriate Guild - in fact everything seemed to run on Guilds here, it was worse than the City - and yet, somehow, it all seemed to work.

The city’s Vestigia were strong enough to make my head spin, but even so they were nearly drowned by the more mundane miasma, and even then I could tell that several of the Watch officers were not exactly human even when they looked it. For example, the tall, vaguely-Germanic looking lady introduced as Captain Angua gave off a strong impression of wolves and cold forests, and if the slightly shorter, extremely pale Captain Von Humpeding wasn’t some kind of vampire I’d eat my badge. Then there were the dwarfs, several of whom wore metal platforms and eyeshadow and one was missing an eyebrow. I think I saw a golem debating philosophy with a zombie. Speaking of not-quite-human people -

“Ook” said the Librarian of the University. The orangutan I met at the start of the mess, I was told he was also a wizard, and liked the shape too much to change back.

“What’s L-Space? And how can you take me back when I’m in custody?”

“Eek!”

“ _Helping the Watch with their inquiries_ then! It’s not better!”

The Commander levelled a glare at me that would have snapped Toby out of a yapping fit and sent him backing away whimpering. I decided to shut up and fall back on the “look attentive and very carefully not make eye contact” trick. The Commander looked unimpressed, and an oppressive silence fell on the room.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Sam Vimes thought when he saw the apparent wizard who had been making a  ruckus [[1](%E2%80%9C#note1%E2%80%9D)] in Sator Square and The Cham was _Ye gods, he’s young_ , swiftly followed by _if this is another time mess up, thosemonks  [[2](%E2%80%9C#note2%E2%80%9D)] are going to have to bang their drums much louder [[3](%E2%80%9C#note3%E2%80%9D)]_. Except no, because he was a _godsdamned wizard._

He wished he could just leave this mess to the wizards at UU. Unfortunately there was a fruit merchant and a heggler who were insistent on getting the Watch to sort it out, in the hopes of seeing meaningful compensation this decade, and had roped in a passing Captain Carrot [[4](%E2%80%9C#note4%E2%80%9D)]

The pile of cacky got worse: according to the badge the kid was a copper. Well, a detective, technically, but copper-adjacent. And he had magic, which Vimes could concede would be useful in sorting out crimes where magic featured if only you could get round the basic nature of Gorodetsky’s Law [[5](%E2%80%9C#note5%E2%80%9D)]. But he didn’t come from anywhere on the Disc, so Vimes couldn’t recruit him even if he wanted to and the lad probably couldn’t pay the complaining merchants back for their lost goods. Sybil would understand if he did it, and they were so able to afford it the concept was silly, but it would set an unwelcome precedent if he did. Of course, he could do it in exchange for something, made it for the good of the city then. Vetinari would be very annoyed. He might even get sarcastic.

That settled it. He leaned forward, breaking the long silence and pulling Grant out of his uncomfortable performance of the staring-an-inch-to-the-left-of-superior-officer’s-ear routine. He seemed to have had practice at that already.

“How would you like,” said Vimes, “to join the City Watch?”

Grant looked alarmed “sir, what-”

“Not on a permanent basis. You’d get to go home first. But if your governor agrees, we could set you up as a liaison. You’d help us with the weird stuff, and we can help with stuff you haven’t come across before since from what Carrot tells me, magic is much more common and accepted here. If I can swing it with Ridcully you’d have access to the university wizards. They’d probably have access to your version of magic too of course. The Librarian can bring you though either way when you’re needed, I’m sure.”

“Ook!” The salute was like watching a rotary washing line unfold. The Librarian’s body helped with this impression by looking like nothing so much as a pile of very hairy, orange and brown washing.

“There you go then.”

Peter managed to stop gaping long enough for the idea to get to the rational part of his brain. “Sir,” he said, grinning, “Shall we go back to my nick and talk this over properly?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 as the Times reported it in the next edition  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return1%E2%80%9D) ]
> 
> 2 the History Monks. See Thief of Time and Night Watch for details.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return2%E2%80%9D) ]
> 
> 3 Sam Vimes in an emotional state can shout loudly enough to compete with jet engines, if they existed on the Disc. The Watch should probably have some sort of scheme in case all their members go deaf from it, but it did once help save him from a quasi-demonic entity that was trying to possess him. See Thud! for details.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return3%E2%80%9D) ]
> 
> 4 who had defused the situation admirably, and when Peter showed an interest in the architecture they were passing enthusiastically gave a tourguide-worthy introduction to Ankh-Morpork’s historical buildings and notable landmarks.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return4%E2%80%9D) ]
> 
> 5 A witch or wizard’s ego will increase in direct proportion to their magical strength and training. If they had a large ego in the first place, this is likely to result in smoking craters in the surrounding countryside. Or highly traumatised vampires.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return5%E2%80%9D) ]


End file.
